http://www.ted.com/talks/zimchallenge#t-202882

http://www.amazon.com/Demise-Guys-Boys-Struggling-About-ebook/dp/B00850HTHO/

Americans are now spending more than 20% of all internet time on Facebook and Instagram.

The National Institute of Informatics said Saturday that its AI program, developed with university and corporate researchers, achieved an above-average score on a college entrance exam for the first time. The test covered five subjects including math, physics and English.

The AI received a score of 511 points out of 950, above the national average of 416, and did exceptionally well on math and history-related problems, the institute said.

With that score, the AI has at least an 80% chance of being accepted to 441 private universities and 33 national universities, according to the institute.

http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2015/11/16/artificial-intelligence-program-passes-college-entrance-exam/

Small good news

European policymakers are considering a draft of the European Data Protection Regulation that would prohibit teens under 16 from participating in social media without parental consent. Up until this point, the draft Regulation set the age at 13, which is consistent with laws and practices around the world.

They passed it 15 December

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-15-6321_en.htm

China now has around 550 millions of mobile devices, 96% of them have at least one game installed, and around 30% of users spend more than one hour of their life every day to play this games.

And their economical development has slowed down…

Their mental development slowed down to zero long time ago :-)

http://s1.q4cdn.com/199638165/files/doc_presentations/2014/The-Total-Audience-Report.pdf

The study published in Psychological Science, Pam A. Mueller of Princeton University and Daniel M. Oppenheimer of the University of California, Los Angeles sought to test how note-taking by hand or by computer affects learning.

"When people type their notes, they have this tendency to try to take verbatim notes and write down as much of the lecture as they can," Mueller tells NPR's Rachel Martin. "The students who were taking longhand notes in our studies were forced to be more selective — because you can't write as fast as you can type. And that extra processing of the material that they were doing benefited them."

http://www.npr.org/2016/04/17/474525392/attention-students-put-your-laptops-away

As usual such guys have issues understanding how mind works. Big areas in brain are dedicated to precise motor skills. Using laptops from small age made huge hit on this. Even without summary involving motor skills greatly help you to remember things.

This is mostly the failure of the parents and educators in the lower and middle classes to inspire and motivate young people to push themselves academically and learn. That in turn can be attributed to the failure of the political/social leaders to inspire the adults to push the young people.

Absolutely not. Your view is idealistic one. Usually happens due to misunderstanding how things work.
Can tell you both as materialist and teacher :-)

@joethepro

Issues arise from real material things around people, from economics. Internet is also not some abstract thing. Now it is commercial and information resource owned by ruling class and used to spread usual old lies, selling stuff and offer lots of entertainment.

In real current situation it is very hard to children to find good useful information like courses and even harder to keep following them and work by themselves.

No reason they cant access a free website.

Lots of reasons, actually. You try to put blame on heads of people who are not cause of issue.

Im not blaming the people but the infrastructure. Well, people need to have self motivation as well, but that is a whole different topic, being especially difficult for those in poverty.

It is ok, I mean that your view is very common. But as you try to look deeper you understand that the more this people need such free course - the less is probability to find and start using them. Just due to real things around and actual situation.
As I posted above research also prove same thing - all free courses made difference between top earners and bottom ones larger, not smaller as it could be assumed.